


when peter met michelle

by youheldyourbreath



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, and then they fall in love, but its all a mess, the feel good when harry met sally au no one asked for, then they are, they aren't friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-14 02:10:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16904082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: Can men and women be friends without sex getting in the way? Maybe.Can Michelle Jones and Peter Parker be friends without sex getting in the way? It seems less likely.or the When Harry Met Sally au





	1. twenty-two

Michelle Jones sat on her rigid suitcase outside the student center at Stanford, exasperated. She glanced over her shoulder and saw her college roommate, Liz,  _still_  wrapped in an amorous embrace with her boyfriend. The college graduate rolled her eyes and played with the frayed edges of her book.

More time ticked by and the couple saying their final goodbyes with their tongues continued to paw at each other. Michelle wanted to throw something at Liz’s head to catch her attention. They were burning daylight now, and she wanted to begin this roadtrip as soon as possible. The sooner it began, the sooner it would be over.  

She didn’t know much about the boyfriend that was moving to New York, too. When Michelle had told her old roommate that she was moving to New York to become a journalist, Liz had collapsed into tears about her boyfriend, Peter, who was also moving to New York after graduation to work for Stark Industries. Michelle had pat her friend on the back, consoled her, and then very gently asked if she could hitch a ride with said-boyfriend to get to New York. Plane tickets were expensive and she was about to be a broke New Yorker with no job, no apartment and no friends.

So, much to her chagrin, she was very much on Peter Parker’s timetable for all roadtrip related things, including when they left.

She chanced another look at Peter and Liz, who were somehow more reluctant to part than thirty seconds ago, and feared she would never leave the Stanford Campus if she didn’t intervene. Michelle cleared her throat and the two lovers dizzly staggered apart.

Liz touched Peter’s face and whispered, “Call me as soon as you get there.”

He crossed his heart and cheekily added, “Hope to die.”

Having had enough, Michelle rolled her bag to his car and called out, “See you soon, Lizzy.” They had said their goodbyes that morning with a blowout roommate brunch.

Peter jogged to his car and took Michelle’s suitcase off of her hands, loading it in the back of his car. Finally, it seemed, they were leaving.

Until. Peter pulled Liz in for another kiss. Michelle finally interjected, “Okay, I’m all ready to go.”

Liz reluctantly unwound herself from Peter’s arms and shooed him to his car. “Off you go! And be safe, you two.”

She watched Peter take a final assessment of their campus, like he was saying some silent goodbye, and he blew Liz another kiss from the window.

Then, they were off.

* * *

The car ride was dreadfully silent. From what Michelle had meticulously mapped out, it would take them just over three days to get to New York City if they both pulled very long shifts at the wheel. She figured it was better to be driving somewhere than to be sitting nowhere and left to talk.

Still, Peter tried to strike up conversation in every which way he could think of, riddling off seemingly unrelated topics. On the first day, he asked her about the weirdest cartoon she watched as a child. On the second day, he went on a two hour rant about engineering that she barely understood.  

On the third day, halfway through Illinois, he asked, “Do you ever think about death?”

Michelle, who was sitting sprawled out in the passenger seat trying to focus on a good book, looked up from the well-loved pages and replied flatly, “What?”

“You know,” he tapped jovially on the steering wheel, “death. You ever think about it?”

Intrigued, she closed her book. “Well, sure. Everybody does.”

“No, but, like, everybody thinks about death but not everybody really thinks about death. Not for longer than its comfortable. They let it be a fleeting thought, something that happens but goes on unacknowledged.”

Michelle gnawed on her lip, “I think about death a normal amount, I think.”

Peter hummed, “No, you don’t. If you did, you’d have more to say about it.”

At that, she frowned, “What? So you think you’re, like, better than me because you have deep thoughts about death?”

He shook his head, “Not better. Maybe more introspective.”

Michelle rolled her eyes for what felt like the millionth time on their roadtrip. “You are not more introspective than me.”

Peter conceded, “Fine. Maybe more self aware?”

She prodded him with the spine of her book, which made him smile. She frowned more deeply, “You are not.”

He turned his head to look at her and his smile was firing with mischief, “You’re talking to me.”

She ducked her head, embarrassed, “I’m not doing that either.”

“Yes, you are,” he sang in a loopy, out-of-tune melody. “We’re going to be friends, Michelle. Just you wait and see.”

“Men and women can’t be friends without men letting sex get in the way,” Michelle stretched in the passenger seat. Her bones cracked and she felt she could breathe again. Being stuffed in a car on a never-ending road trip with a complete stranger was beginning to wear on her body, but she had to get to New York and Peter Parker and his beat-up sedan was her ticket.   
Peter sputtered. As if it was an impulse, he clutched the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white, and replied, “Men and women can be friends without the sex part ruining it.”

Michelle tucked her feet under her bottom and turned to face him. She rested her chin on her bent knee and watched him drive for a mile or two before breaking the pervasive awkward silence, “Are you saying you haven’t once thought about me naked in the last two days?” Peter gulped like a goldfish and turned an unattractive shade of red. Michelle grinned knowingly, “See? I told you. Men let the sex part get in the way.”

The driver squinted at the endless road ahead, “You’re teasing me.”

Michelle flopped back in her seat, “You make it so easy.”

“Besides,” Peter spoke over her, “I barely know you.” His words were reeking of humble pie. 

“And yet,” Michelle countered, “you still pictured me naked.” 

For the first time their entire roadtrip, the rest of the car ride to their next stop was endured in complete silence. Michelle cracked open her well-worn book and read, while Peter turned up the radio and filled the car with a burned copy of some old Nirvana album and for several hours Kurt Cobain’s voice filled the car and his words were the only ones spoken. 

As the sun began to set, turning the Midwest sky a hazy pink, Peter’s stomach roared. “We should eat,” Peter suggested. Michelle dog-eared her book, “I’ll help keep an eye out for the next rest stop.” Peter looked at the book in her lap and grumbled. Michelle could feel him assessing her and finding something lacking. He was judging her and she loathed judgment. “What?” she demanded.

He briefly met her eye, “You dog-ear your books.”

She bristled, “So?”

“Well, it’s just…it’s inhuman.”

Michelle felt her face, her carefully curated mask of indifference, waver and she laughed, “What?”

His tense shoulders slackened and he took the dog-ear offense another step further, “What kind of psychopath dog-ears a good book?”

She pulled her knees into her chest and tucked her chin in the divot between her two kneecaps, looking at him like she had before. “The kind that isn’t precious with her books.”

“Blasphemy,” he tossed a smile in her direction. It was an effortless kind of smile. A friendly smile. And yet, Michelle Jones maintained that men and women couldn’t be friends. She had seen and experienced too much to even consider an alternative. 

“You dork,” she returned his grin, “Find us something to eat.”

They lapsed into cautious, polite conversation until Peter spotted a charming diner off the highway. Michelle was too hungry, too tired from being crowded in a car all day to really worry about a random restaurant in the middle of America with no civilization for miles and miles in either direction. But when the call stalled and turned off, she hesitated when Peter climbed out of the car.

“What?” he asked, rounding her side of the car and opening her door. 

She shook her head, “Nothing. Just. It’s nothing.”

“I thought you were hungry,” he said, belligerently missing the point of her hesitancy. 

“Just.”

He wiggled his shoulders playfully, “Just?”

“Just, we’re in the middle of nowhere and walking into an environment I don’t know. I’m a black woman. This is nowhere America.”

Her implication dawned on him and Peter’s face transformed into something more intense and concentrated than she had ever seen before. He was a frivolous kind of boy. But there was something steely underneath that facade. “I’m not going to let anything happen.” He crossed his heart, like he had with Liz, and smirked, “Hope to die. 

She repeated the gesture with an eye roll, but his words gave her the strength to climb out of the car. 

When they walked into the diner, it was mostly empty. There was an older woman serving the few occupied tables and a vintage jukebox was playing some song Michelle had never heard, but there was nothing immediately hostile about the environment. 

The server called over her shoulder, “Take a seat anywhere, kids. I’ll be with yah in a minute.”

Michelle dropped into a dated mauve booth and Peter sat opposite of her. He crinkled the laminated menu and surveyed the options. She watched him. She was starting to like watching him. He had so many silly little ticks that were fascinating. Michelle could have filled an entire book of all of his idiosyncrasies. He contained multitudes. 

She continued to watch him until the waitress arrived to take their orders. Peter asked for a cheeseburger. Michelle launched off into the most specific, complicated order of a tuna melt she was certain Peter had ever heard by the way his eyes exploded. When the waitress clucked back to the kitchen, Peter rested his palms on the table, “You’re neurotic.” 

She countered, “I’m particular.”

“You’re a tuna melt heathen.” 

“I’m a tuna melt heathen, neurotic and a psychopath? My how you flatter me, Mr. Parker,” she said, oozing sarcasm, but underneath there was a twinkle of something else. He ate his plain cheeseburger, Michelle ate her very, very particular tuna melt and the waitress sent them on their way.

Michelle walked around the driver-side of the car and Peter sidestepped her. She raised her eyebrow, “Yes?”

“I’ll get this shift,” Peter said.

She crossed her arms over her chest, “No. It’s my shift.”

“Come on, I got it,” he reached for the door handle.

Michelle stepped in the way of his hand and asserted, “No. It’s my shift.”

He scowled, “Why are you being so difficult?”

“Why are you changing the schedule?”

“It’s called being nice!”

“No, you’re being a pain.”

“Fine!” Peter shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. “You drive.” He stormed around the other side of the car and climbed in, mumbling to himself the entire walk. Michelle rolled her eyes at his antics and slid into the passenger seat. Before she turned on the car, Peter sniped, “You’re a very difficult woman.”

Her entire next shift was swallowed in icy silence and bitter feelings on both sides.

* * *

When they pulled into New York City the next afternoon, Peter was at the wheel. The car was still an inhospitable environment, but the look of New York City in the afternoon in summer melted their antagonistic natures.

Michelle stuck her head out the window to get a better look at her new home and gasped, “ _Wow_.”

Peter nodded in agreement, “Wow is right.”

New York City looked nothing and everything like the movies. It had a weird smell and even weirder people, but Michelle was instantly in love. This would be her home. She was going to be a journalist in New York City. She was going to make it.

When Peter pulled outside of the apartment she was staying at until she found something more permanent, a friend of a friend of a friend from Stanford, they both began to speak at once.   
“Michelle, look—”

“Peter, it was—”

They simultaneously snapped their mouths shut.

Peter said, “Sorry, what were you going to say?”

“No, you,” Michelle graciously extended.

“No, you were speaking first.”

“We were speaking at the same time,” she pointed out.

He husked a too-tired laugh, “Fine. Just, good luck.” He showed his hand and she took it after only a moment of unwillingness. They shook hands.

Not as friends. After all, women and men couldn’t be friends without sex getting in the way.

And parted.

* * *

Not forever. 

Five years was a long time, but hardly forever.


	2. twenty-seven

Michelle felt the springy, unreliable airplane seat give when the passenger in the row behind her pulled on her headrest. She sucked in a harsh breath and snapped as she turned around, “Do you mind?”

She was shocked, no shocked was not a strong enough word, she was appalled to see the headrest offender was Peter Parker. It had been five years since she had been forced to suffer his acquaintance. When they had parted ways in New York City all those years ago she had never thought she would see him again. It was a comforting thought whenever she thought about those three, never-ending days it took to get from Stanford to her new home. He had been a necessary evil.

And now he was sitting behind her on a flight from Chicago to New York.  

Peter Parker smiled at her in a youth but accessing manner, “Stanford, right?”

The man sitting beside Michelle tensed as Peter stuck his head between the two seats to speak to Michelle more properly. She was surprised he didn’t climb over the chairs and try to sit in her lap. She promptly turned away from him, trying to refocus on the book sitting forgotten in her lap, “Yes.”

“I knew it,” Peter snapped his fingers. She rolled her eyes. “Did we ever…?” He made a lewd gesture with his hands and Michelle decided she would have very much liked to strangle him with her bare hands.

He did not seem to notice the brewing discontent from the other passengers. The man beside Michelle, having had quite enough, stood up from his seat, “Would you like to sit here, instead?”

Michelle shook her head, “Oh no—“

“Sure,” Peter chirped. The two men danced around each other until they were settled. Peter turned around to the man that was finally trying to read his newspaper in some peace and said, “You’re a real pal.”

Michelle snorted, which drew his attention to her. She lifted her book and endeavored to block his face from her sight. “I swear I know you from somewhere,” he mused.

Offended, she dropped her book in her lap and hissed, “We took a road trip together. Five years ago.”

Peter’s eyes widened in recognition. “Holy crap. Michelle Jones?” She nodded tersely. “Did you look this good in college?”

She cracked her book shut, “I beg your pardon?”

He raised his hands, still smiling and completely undeterred, “I’m not trying to be offensive. Just, wow. You’re very attractive.” He peaked at her book and continued rambling, “You were friends with…with…”

Michelle stared at him and watched him struggle. He looked at her with doe-like eyes, as if to ask her for her help jogging his memory. She clenched her jaw and supplied the answer he was looking for, “Liz.”

Peter cursed, “Right. Liz.”

She flipped open her book again, “I can’t believe you don’t remember Liz.”

“Of course I do. Liz…Liz Toots.”

“Toomes.”

“Right, Liz Toomes,” Peter waved his hand dismissively. “That’s what I said.”

Impulsively, she shut her book closed once more. She was not going to be able to concentrate on Inga Muscio now. She had a tweeting bird flapping about in her eardrums. Peter Parker was a menace. “I can’t believe you don’t remember Liz Toomes.”

He snuggled back into the crappy, ill-made airplane seat, “I remember Liz Toomes.”

“Oh yeah?”

He turned his head to Michelle and crossed his finger over his chest. She blinked. He smirked, “Hope to die.”

Michelle sulked, “Fine, you remember Liz.” She fiddled with the frayed edges of her book and felt as if she was transported back-in-time five years to the quick, witty arguments she had shared with Peter in his beat-up sedan. Just like that sedan, she was stuck in her seat with no other option but to endure his company.

“So,” Peter took a sip of his soda, “You’re dating Harry, was it?”

Michelle staggered unprettily, “Excuse me?”

Peter squinted at the soda in his hands and masterfully pivoted their conversation, “You ever think soda has a murky kind of look to it?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, “Oh no. You don’t get to change the subject so easily. How did you know I was dating Harry?”

“Oh,” Peter grinned at her. “That’s easy. See, you were talking what’s-his-faces’ ears about Mr. Perfect Harry.” He gestured behind himself to the gentleman that she had been sitting next to until Peter impolitely budded his fat head into her conversation. Michelle openly stared at him. “No wonder he was so eager to switch seats with me. Hell, I’m surprised the whole airplane doesn’t know about Mr. Perfect Harry.”

“Please,” she turned her shoulder on him. “He asked who dropped me off at the airport.”

“Sure, he did,” Peter agreed. “And then you proceeded to talk his ear off about your new relationship.” Michelle scowled. Peter’s grin deepened, “I am not judging you. In the slightest. I think its really sweet you found someone you like so much you just have to talk about him.”

"Please don't act like you know me. We haven't spoken in five years," Michelle reminded him. "In fact," she continued, rolling her fingers impatiently on the tattered cover of her book, "if I remember correctly, we didn't even really speak that much on that road trip."

Peter took the book from her hands, as if to better inspect the title. Her jaw practically dropped on the ground. He said, "Yes, we did. We drove across country together for three days and some change. We talked."

She snatched her book back, "No, you talked."

"That is only because you refused to talk to me. It was not from my lack of trying."

Michelle burrowed back in her seat, as if the barely-better-than-cardboard airplane seat was capable of swallowing her whole so she didn't have to speak to Peter Parker anymore. In five years, he had not changed an inch. He was still willfully oblivious and hid his offhanded, sharp comments behind a truly dazzling smile. "Fine," she acquiesced. "But," she stared him dead in the eye, "did you ever consider why I didn't talk to you much?"

"Yes," he nodded.

She waited for him to clarify. When it became apparent he did not have any plans to do so, she prompted him, "Well?"

He looked her up and down, as if accessing her character, and she recalled when he had done the same thing on their road trip when he had spotted her dogear her books. It was as irritating now as it had been then. He said completely unruffled, "You're uptight."

Michelle's jaw dropped and she scrambled to pick it up from the floor. She would not give him the satisfaction of catching her off guard, "Excuse me?"

"You are," he repeated. "And its not a bad thing. You're an observant person. You have to be somewhat reflective. You have to know you're uptight."

"Is this about the death thing?" Michelle asked. It had grated on her nerves for years that a boy she barely knew on a road trip she would have rather not have taken, said she was not introspective. Then, she had been too tired from days on the road and worn thin by his presence to really come back with a witty response. Now, she was an educated, relatively successful journalist.

And she still was floundering from something witty to say.

He raised his eyebrow, visibly lost, "What death thing?"

"You said that I didn't think about death enough, so I wasn't introspective."

He shook his head, "I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did," she affirmed. "Its been bothering me for five years."

Peter finished off his soda, "Five years is a long time."

"Yes," she said. She lamented why every time she met Peter Parker she was forced to endure his presence in some kind of mode of transportation that she was unable to flee from. In the real world, she could have simply walked away from him. On an airplane, the only place to go was nowhere.

"You should let that go." His face lit up. Something seemed to occur to him. And he, without much of a filter, blurted out, "See? Uptight."

She fumed, and returned to her book.

He waited two significant beats before breaking the silence, "So, tell me about Harry." Michelle exhaled through her nostrils. Peter smiled, "Come on, we have an hour left of this flight." She huffed, so he sweetened his offer, "I promise I'll be less irritating." He crossed his heart and smiled, "Hope to die." She pursed her lips. Such a small gesture should not have been allowed to be so disarmingly endearing.

While Michelle contemplated his proposal, he waved down a stewardess who seemed utterly charmed by his lopsided grin and untamed eyebrow. “Can I have another coke, please?” Peter grinned.

The flight attendant nodded curtly and scurried off with a blatant blush coloring her cheeks to fetch Peter his coke. Michelle observed, “We only get one complimentary drink per flight.”

Peter knit his eyebrows, “Is that true?”

Michelle took a deep breath. She tried not to be cynical, but it was so difficult. She assumed Peter Parker floated through his entire life never being told no. HIs charisma was a putrid odor. And, the worst part, was she, too, could admit he had a rather bewitching smile. It was sloppy and unkempt and boyish. Everything about him seemed like he had rolled out of bed and run thirty city blocks to arrive just in the nick of time. He rode life's coattails and it all looked to be working out just fine for him.

She pivoted the conversation, silently accepting that he would continue to talk to her whether she responded or not, "Harry is my boyfriend."

Peter snuggled into his crappy airplane chair, "And?"

"And," Michelle tucked her hair behind her ear, "he's great. Its new."

"I know its new," Peter said, cheekily. "I heard that part, remember?"

"Well, it is." Michelle quieted when the flight attendant returned with Peter's second complimentary drink. She was all red and she bat her eyelashes excessively, which Michelle assumed was meant to look seductive but all she managed to do was look like she had some kind of compulsive tick.

Peter took the soda from her hand and gave her a genuine thank you. The flight attendant bravely asked, "Could I maybe get your number?"

Peter's eyes widened as he caught up to the temperature of the moment. He had somehow missed it. He struggled to find his words for a few moments and the flight attendant's face fell. Peter seemed even more affected by her defeated face, "No, wait, miss. You're lovely." The stewardess perked up. "But I'm engaged."

Michelle short-circuited. Peter Parker was engaged. She could scarcely believe it. He was, well, Peter Parker. Throughly embarrassed, the flight attendant retreated to the back of the plane. Michelle continued to reel.

Peter turned to Michelle expectantly, "Well? You were saying something about Harry."

Michelle remained hung up on his news, "You're engaged."

He flushed, "Uh, yeah."

"As in, someone is going to marry you?"

He nodded, "Yep."

"Wow," Michelle breathed.

He raised his eyebrow, "Wait, what do you mean wow?"

She waved her hand, "Oh, nothing. I just, I didn't expect..."

"Didn't expect what?" he put his soda down on the flimsy drop-down table. "Someone to find me attractive and charming enough to marry?"

Michelle shook her head, "No. I didn't expect you to be engaged because you've been flirting with me the last five minutes."

Peter went red from his neck to his nose. He stuttered, "That isn't true."

"Yes, it is. You changed your seat, you've been trying to get me to talk to you and catch up even though we weren't ever really friends, you were being cynical about Mr. Perfect Harry. You've been flirting with me," she said. It wasn't very good flirting, she could admit, but it was still flirting. She had been flirted with many times in her life and Peter Parker was flirting with her. She knew it like she knew her name.

He was quiet for a long time. She almost opened her book once or twice to continue reading, but the air was so thick with tension that she was afraid if she moved or spoke something in the moment would collapse or break. She was immobilized.

Finally, Peter spoke slowly, "You can have a conversation with someone without it being flirting."

She turned to look at him. In their plane seats, they were too close. Their legs and arms were touching and, when she faced him, their noses were barely a hair apart. Damn economy seats. Michelle trampled the thump thump thump of her heart. It was the intensity of the moment, she discerned. And nothing more.

"Tell me you weren't flirting with me," she challenged.

Peter opened his mouth. Peter closed his mouth. Softly, Michelle repeated, "Tell me you weren't flirting with me."

"I am engaged," he said instead. Michelle raised her eyebrow expectantly. His shoulders slumped, "I wasn't intentionally flirting with you."

Five years ago there had been a different conversation about the bizarre nature of their not-relationship-relationship. Peter had tried his very hardest then, too, to try and strike up conversation with her. It had failed because of one fact that Michelle held very dear to her chest. "Men and women can't be friends without men letting sex get in the way," she had said. She still believed that to be true.

Five years later and he was still flirting with her.

* * *

When the plane landed, after nearly an hour of charged silence, Michelle and Peter quietly and respectfully made their way off of the plane.

And parted.

* * *

Not forever.

Three years was a long time, but hardly forever.


	3. thirty

Betty looked right past Michelle. Her words trailed off. She raised her eyebrow, “Elizabeth, what are you looking at?”

Her best friend tilted her head, “There is someone looking at you in the romance section.” Michelle turned over her shoulder scanned the little bookshop for the offending watcher. She spotted a rather short man not-so-subtly hiding behind a book with a rather busty damsel draped in the arms of a half-naked sailor. She could not properly make out his face without her glasses. She squinted. Still, his eyes did not ring any bells.

Michelle turned to Betty, “Do you know him?”

She shook her head, “Nope. I’d remember that face. He’s cute.”

Michelle rolled her eyes, “You think every crusty white boy is cute.”

Betty sighed, “I know. It’s my greatest weakness.” Her friend snapped to attention, her spine straightening and she hissed, “Crusty white boy is coming over here.”

Her back prickled. Michelle was not in the mood to be harassed by some man she had never met. She had other things she needed to accomplish that would very certainly get derailed if romance-section-guy made her life difficult. Michelle grabbed the sleeve of Betty’s shirt, and implored her, “We should go.”

“Michelle?” A third voice she had not heard in nearly three years hoped tentatively.

She dropped Betty’s sleeve. In all the bookshops, in all of New York, Peter Parker had to walk into her favorite one. “Peter,” she breathed.

At thirty, he still managed to retain some boyish charm to his looks. His hair was not receding and the wrinkles around the corners of his mouth and eyes looked more like markers of smiles than markers of age. All in all, he had aged well.

Betty cleared her throat.

Michelle ducked her head and cursed, “Shit. Sorry. Betty this is, uh, Peter Parker. Peter Parker this is Betty Bryant. We both work together at—”

“The Daily Bugle,” Peter finished for her. He flushed, “Sorry, that was rude. I read your article last year on the bathroom bill, Miss Bryant. It was really something.”

Michelle saw Betty completely melt into mush. Her best friend was many things—an ace reporter, an excellent cook and a horrible sap around moderately attractive men. She waved him off and giggled, “Oh please.”

“Really,” he grinned. “It was great. Really made me think.”

She took a half-assed curtsey, “Well, thank you.”

Michelle interjected, trying to move the conversation into duller and less intimate conversation, “How’s married life, Peter?”

His smile deepened into a frown. Hanging limply off of his wrist was a plastic bag from the bookstore, and he pulled a recent purchase free. Peter flashed the title. It read: _Surviving Separation and Divorce_.

A tidal wave of shame flooded her system and drowned whatever sarcastic remark she was cooking up on the off chance he decided to be the same infuriating person she had met years before. Now, she felt like the asshole.

Betty sympathetically cooed, “I’m so sorry.”

Peter shrugged, “It happens.”

“What happened?” Betty indelicately asked. Michelle groaned. Her friend flushed a deep red and stuttered, “Oh shit. I’m so…wow…that was….shit, just ignore me. I’m going to…” Betty pointed behind herself and stepped away slowly as her mouth continued to run, “…go, I think. Nice to meet you. Sorry about your divorce. Oh. Shit. There I go, again.”

“Betty,” Michelle called after her friend who was ducking out of the little book shop. “Betty, where are you going?”

“Anywhere else,” she said.

The front door of the shop swung shut and the little bell hanging over the door tolled. Michelle dropped her head and sighed. Peter chuckled. Michelle looked up, “What?”

He scratched the back of his neck and smiled graciously, “Nothing. That was just—”

“—a lot,” Michelle agreed. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I don’t think she meant to offend you. She’s a reporter. Asking questions is a reflex.”

He slipped his book back in the translucent plastic bag. Michelle loathed the stretch of quiet that webbed between the two of them, connecting them in the most uncomfortable manner. She feigned a stretch, “Well, I should probably—”

Peter swiftly cut her off with a question, “Do you want to get some coffee?”  

Michelle felt her eyebrow raise so high it hid in the curls swept all over her face in a messy fashion. She cleared her throat, “Excuse me?”

Peter swung the bag between his thumb and forefinger anxiously, “Just, uh, I feel like I owe you an apology. And a coffee.”

She should have said no. She should have learned from the two experiences she had with Peter Parker. She should have wished him well on his divorce and gone on her merry way. She knew she should have, but she couldn’t help herself from nodding, “Yeah, alright.”

* * *

Coffee turned into lunch. Lunch turned into a mid-afternoon stroll through the crowded New York streets, ducking strings of tourists, while Peter did his best impression of Tony Stark.

Michelle laughed. It was the kind that ached from belly to her toes. Her entire body sparkled. She had not laughed so hard in years. Perhaps, she thought, since before Harry Osborn had punched a hole through her life and left the empty bits a hollow cave.

She wiped laughter tears from the corners of her eyes, “God, I haven’t laughed like this in years.”

Peter nudged her arm with his elbow, “You should laugh more. You have a nice laugh, Michelle.”

Michelle rolled her eyes, but it was more affectionate than she had ever imagined she could have conjured for such a man. They were not twenty-two anymore. Thirty had softened their edges.

At twenty-two, she had been a healthy skeptic of his intentions and he had wanted to sleep with her.

At twenty-seven, she had been unwilling to adjust the sour taste he had left in her mouth from their first meeting and he was obnoxious to a fault.

At thirty, they had lived enough life to take every interaction at face value and learned that people were capable of change.

And it was only for that reason that Michelle tucked a curl behind her ear and said, “My friends call me MJ.”

Peter looked gobsmacked, like someone had beat his head in with a bat, “I-I thought you didn’t think men and women could be friends?”

Michelle glanced at the piss-stained New York City street, “I didn’t.”

He smiled at her. She smiled back. And their eyes locked.

His phone buzzed and jerked them out of the unnatural moment. She was glad for his distraction. She couldn’t pinpoint why she felt so vulnerable. He squinted at the screen, “I’ve, uh, got to go.”

She extinguished the fire of disappointment that raged in her stomach and, in that smoke, asked, “Where are you going, Peter?” He blanched. “What are you hiding?” He struggled for purchase, until she laughed, again, “I’m just kidding. I don’t care.”

Peter good-naturedly tossed her a careless grin, “You’re just the same, Jones.” She teasingly crossed her heart. He returned the gesture. Peter asked, “Does this mean we’re friends now?”

“Careful,” she warned, throwing her hands to her hips, “or we just might be.”

* * *

They were.

* * *

Peter and Michelle spent most days together. Mostly laughing. Michelle could not remember a time where she had laughed so much. She had always been considered a serious girl and a harder woman. Laughter was a hard won feat and Peter Parker bubbled laughter out of her like a professional. And the laughter was accompanied by something better—talking.

They could talk about anything and everything. There was no pressure and no stress. They were two old acquaintances that had fallen into friendship. There were no rules.

As they walked through Central Park toward the bitter end of November, Michelle sipped her coffee and let the cup linger near her nose so she could skirt off some of the chilly air with the steam. Peter waved his hands dramatically as he recounted his dream from the night before, “Then, I’m making out with that cute girl from my office.”

“Gwen,” Michelle helpfully supplied.

Peter snapped his fingers, “Right. Gwen. And suddenly, my Aunt May is there and she’s giving me pointers. Like, ‘Peter do this’ or ‘Peter don’t be so handsy’ or ‘Peter that’s too much tongue’ and I’m very stressed. How am I supposed to impress office girl…”

“Gwen,” Michelle reminded him.

“…if my Aunt May insists on being there,” Peter finished, undeterred from her interruption.

Michelle took another thoughtful sip of her coffee. Peter patiently awaited her thorough assessment. He was an insane dreamer and she, better than anyone, could piece through the bullshit. Anyway, she liked that he valued her opinion. For someone so chatty, he liked to listen. “Well,” she started. He perked up and she rolled her eyes, “It sounds like you’ve got some kind of crush on the office girl.”

“Oh, shut up,” Peter chuckled. She lifted the coffee to her lips, but he stole it out from underneath her hands and took a generous gulp.

Michelle frowned, “Ask first, dork.”

He returned her coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his mouth. “Besides, you know I’m not ready to date yet,” Peter said quietly.

Michelle sighed. She had not meant to insinuate he should be dating. After all, she knew that the ink had barely dried on his divorce from Felicia, but he had been chattering on about the office girl, Gwen, for two whole weeks. He deserved to date someone nice after the viper known as Felicia had bled him completely dry.

Eventually, one of them had to start dating, again. Peter seemed the type to start first.

Michelle knew it was hypocritical to expect him to date while she was still humbled by her break up with Harry, but she couldn’t imagine dating any more disappointments. She had known when she met him they were not going to get married. Hell, he had even told her that he wasn’t the type of man to get married, but after nearly three years of dating, she had started to harbor a secret hope.

It had all been blown to bits when she had figured out her most deep, secret wish—she wanted kids. She wanted conventional. Or, at least, as conventional as Michelle Jones could swallow. She wanted to be a wife and mother, and a journalist and feminist. It was 2018. She could have everything she wanted and more.

Except Harry didn’t want any of that.

She had told him, quietly, that she wanted kids, leaving marriage to the side as not to overwhelm him, and he had stared at her blankly. He had stared at her for a long time. When he had stopped staring, when he looked away, Michelle had known it was over.

Really, she was glad it was over. She deserved to be with someone that loved her without conditions.

* * *

“I thought I told you,” Peter grumbled, yanking off the tie that Michelle had wrapped around his neck, “I’m not ready to date.”

“Yes, you are,” Michelle pulled his hands away from the tie he had ruined and meticulously retied the damn thing. It was a deep blue. She had seen it at the store the other day and thought it suited him, so he was going to wear the thing or else she was never buying him anything, again.

Until she saw something else that was perfect for him.

He was a hopeless case of a man. He didn’t know how to shop for himself and as his best friend she had a moral obligation to help him not be such a human disaster. Besides, he needed to look nice for the date she had squared up for him.

“You’ve met Betty,” she stuck her tongue out thoughtfully as she focused on his tie. He had really made a mess out of it. She tightened it. “She’s nice.”

“I don’t want to date Betty,” Peter pouted. “I just got divorced,” he pitifully moped.  

Michelle raised her manicured, unimpressed eyebrow, “Seven months ago. You can’t keep using that as an excuse.”

“You and Harry broke up nine months ago and I don’t see you dating.”

“Careful,” she pulled on his tie. He swiped a kiss on her cheek and sidestepped her to look in the mirror. Michelle rested her hands on her hips and watched him fuss with his reflection. It was endearing how nervous he looked. “You look great. Don’t be nervous,” she said.

He smoothed down his shirt. “I’m not nervous about the shirt.”

She moved beside him and stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror. He laughed. Michelle checked his hip, “Then, what?”

He made a funny face at her in the mirror. She mimicked the gesture. “I, uh, asked my friend Ned to come.”

Michelle blinked. Then, deeply scowled. “Excuse me?” she gritted through her two front teeth. It had taken her three weeks to convince Peter to go on a date with her desperately single friend Betty and he pulled this stunt? Oh, yeah. She was going to kill him.

As if sensing her murderous intent, he put his hands up, “Hang on. Wait. I just figured we could, uh, make it a double date. Ease into it.”

Michelle tossed a sock at his face, “Double date? Who is going on this dumb double date, huh?”

Peter sheepishly caught the sock, “I was hoping you would.”

“No,” Michelle laughed bitterly. Peter took a step toward her, adopting his most pathetic, adorable face. Michelle really was going to kill him. His face would not be weaponized. She was not going out. Michelle had a date with a carton of ice cream. She repeated, more seriously, “No.” He pouted. “No,” she said with finality.

No, she was not going. No, sir. Not her.

* * *

The restaurant was bustling with happy couples, all except the foursome that sat in center at the deep purple round table. Betty picked up her fork and counted the prongs for the twentieth time. Peter pursed his lips and kept a wary eye out for the waiter that would mercifully save them from the silence. Ned was sweating. Badly.

And Michelle loathed being roped into the whole mess.

The waiter appeared with too much exuberance for their morose bunch. She flipped open her notepad and chirped, “What can I get you, folks?”

Michelle flew out of the gate with the most decisive (see: complicated) order of the group. She liked things to be just right. The waitress looked overwhelmed, but dutifully jotted down each instruction. Betty and Peter were both used to the way Michelle ordered, but she could feel Ned watching her with more than a healthy dose of skepticism.

When the waiter scurried off with their orders, Peter broke the silence, forcing a stuffy, formal introduction on Ned, “Michelle is great. She orders things in a way you’d never expect, but it always make the food better.”

“It was a lot,” Ned mumbled.

“But better,” Peter insisted. He winked at MJ and she was, as always, so thankful for him.

Ned rested his napkin on his lap, “If you say so.”

The table grew cold and quiet once more.

She was certain this painful meal was penance for some terrible crime she had committed in a past life, like the guy that created glitter or bedazzled track pants. Michelle attempted to drag the group into some semblance of conversation and turned to Betty, “Did you know that you and Peter are both from Queens?”

The blonde smiled thinly, “Really?” Peter nodded. Betty added, “I was actually raised in Brooklyn, though.” The table went dull and mute.

The lapses in conversation were long enough that to an outside observer, Michelle wondered if people thought they were some kind of traveling performance art group doing a commentary on silence. Michelle would have preferred if they were.

Ned spoke next, “I read a fascinating article in the Daily Bugle today.” Michelle nearly audibly groaned. They had exhausted all topics of conversation that Ned was going to talk to her about some article he skimmed in the Bugle that morning. As a reporter, there was nothing worse than hearing news regurgitated back to her as small talk around the dinner table. It was, undoubtedly, the worst double date she had ever, ever been on. “About the future role of AI in politics. It was fascinating. Terrifying but fascinating.”

Michelle’s eyes flew to Betty whose own were as wide as saucers. Her friend slowly grinned, “I wrote that.”

Ned’s jaw dropped, “Get out of here.”

“No,” she laughed. “I totally wrote that. It was my article.”

“Wow,” Ned smiled, loopy and dumb, “It was…wow. I mean, I shared it with nearly all my co-workers.”

Betty blushed a pretty pink, “You’re joking. Get out of here.”

“Swear it,” Ned scooted his chair closer to Betty.  

Michelle watched in silent horror as the sparks flew across the table. Peter nudged her under the table and their eyes met. He looked equally horrified.

It was, without question, the worst double date of her life.

Then, Peter shrugged, as if to say, “Ah well, at least someone is having fun”, and MJ decided she rather agreed with him.

* * *

Later that night, after Michelle had kicked off her heels and curled into bed with the pint of ice cream she had originally planned to share an amorous evening with and curled up to a movie marathon on TCM, she called Peter. They watched the film together from their respective apartments and chatted over the phone.

She swallowed a mouthful of rocky road, “I can’t believe Betty and Ned left together.”

“Are we so out of practice with dating, we just repulse people? Is that it?” Peter crackled over the phone.

Michelle squinted at her television. It was the end of Casablanca and, like always, she thought Humphrey Boggart was a beautiful man. He was smooth and selfless and didn’t let a dinner table go stale without conversation. God, that double date was awful. “I don’t think I’m repulsive,” Michelle wondered out loud.

Peter huffed into the phone, “Trust me, you’re not.”

Michelle smiled, “Thanks, Peter.”

On the television, Ingrid Bergman walked out of Boggart’s life forever and he handled it all with a stiff upper lip. Michelle admired that. He was able to handle heartbreak like a chip on his shoulder and he carried it well. It wasn’t a burden.

Her love life didn’t always feel that way.

As the credits rolled, Michelle put the empty carton of ice cream on her bedside table, “I’ve got to get up for work in a few hours.”

Through the line, Peter yawned, “Me too.”

“Lunch tomorrow?” She turned off her television and the bedroom light. “I’d never miss it.”

Michelle smiled, “Good night, Peter.”

“Good night, Michelle.”

* * *

“You’re joking,” Michelle peaked over the top of her cubicle to gawk at Betty who was clacking away on her computer. Her friend’s face was an inscrutable mask and Michelle chose her next words very carefully, “You’re moving in with Ned? But you’ve only been dating four months.”

Betty patiently pulled her glasses off and looked up at Michelle. With some kind of wisdom Michelle knew she did not possess, Betty said, “When you know, you know.”

Michelle gnawed on her lip, mulling that over, and countered, “But Ned?”

Betty stood up and rested her elbows on the frail wall that stood between their two cubicles. She tapped Michelle affectionately on the nose, “I like him.”

Michelle was more than skeptical. She had liked Harry Osborn, too. She had moved in with Harry Osborn and thought she had the whole dating scene figured out. It had all imploded in her face and left her very much alone. She melted down all of that worry in one sentence, “Are you sure?”

Betty grabbed Michelle’s hand and squeezed it. “Absolutely.” It didn’t make her feel completely better, but it took some of the edge off of her worry for her friend. “Now,” Betty grinned and shoved an article in MJ’s arms, “Can you edit this for me?”

* * *

“I think its sweet,” Peter threw his arm around Michelle. The fragrant May air tickled her nose and she buried under his arm that wasn’t quite the right fit. He had always been a little more than a hair shorter than her.

Michelle gave him an discouraging look. Peter smiled wider, “I do. Come on, Ned is a good guy and Betty is sweet. It makes sense.” Michelle grumbled. Peter kissed the top of her head, “You’re just being grumpy.”

“I am,” she determined. Something playful welled up in her and she trilled,  “I’ve been told I’m awful cute when I’m grumpy.”

Peter lamented, “I said that one time. It was New Years. Let it go.”

Michelle wrapped both of her arms around his waist, “Never.”

Peter smothered a kiss in her curls.

They walked in companionable silence for several city blocks until Peter grinded to a halt. Michelle unwound her arms from around him and groused, “I don’t want to unpack boxes at Ned and Betty’s too but…” Her words trailed off when she saw Peter’s face. It was dark and open and sad. He was zeroed in on something in the distance—Michelle turned around to find the source of his distraught—or someone.

There was a beautiful blonde woman with long, lean legs and a chest that rivaled Marilyn Monroe. She looked vaguely familiar to Michelle, but she could not put her finger on where they had met. It was hazy, like she had seen her in a photograph.

The blonde approached the two of them with a truly stunning man wrapped snugly around her waist. Michelle looked between Peter and the woman, and it dawned on her just when Peter said, “Hi Felicia.”

“Peter,” Felicia said politely. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Peter looked lost. He wasn’t even trying to come up with any kind of response. He was staring at his ex-wife sadly and beseechingly. She had torn out his heart and stomped all over it with her thick six-inch heels.

Michelle extended her hand and introduced herself, “Hi. I’m Michelle. Peter’s friend.”

Felicia tentatively shook her hand and Michelle felt the sharp scratch of her nails as they made polite. She wanted to toss this careless, frivolous woman across the street. The man beside her, though, would most likely take objection to her plan.

Michelle offered her hand to him, as well, “I’m Michelle.”

He smiled tightly, “I’m Gene.”

Peter finally found his voice on whatever desert island he had lost it on and said, “You look well, Felicia.”

She locked her arm in the crook of Gene’s arm and said, “Thank you.” Felicia hesitated only a second longer before adding, “Well, we should be going…”

Peter nodded. It was all he seemed capable of being able to do. Felicia showed no remorse for his obvious discomfort and, with Gene, left the pair of them standing in the middle of sidewalk.  

* * *

Peter silently unboxed another set of kitchen supplies as Ned and Betty argued in their new living room. Michelle rubbed her temples as Betty tried to be diplomatic about the ugliest coffee table in existence, “Ned, sweetheart, I don’t want the coffee table in the living room. It doesn’t match the couch.”

Ned slid over to the round, wagon-wheel accessory and pled its case, “Okay, but imagine, we’re watching old Westerns and BAM! It’s like we’re in the movie.”

Betty patiently took up his hands and offered an alternative solution, “How about we put it in your study?”

Ned shook his head, “I want the guests to see it.”

Michelle rose her hand, “As I guest, I don’t want to see it.”

The bickering took on a new life as Ned and Betty discussed the pros and cons of the worst interior design choice ever put on coffee table legs, when Peter stormed into the room. He had been silent the entire afternoon, dutifully doing what was asked of him but not contributing at all to the conversation. So, the whole room stopped.

He addressed his friend with an abnormal tightness to his voice, “Hey Ned? Do me a favor and put your name on this coffee table okay? Do it with all your stuff. Because you might think you’ll be together forever, but then one day she’ll start coming home late from the office and you’ll be left at home with a cold dinner for two.” His voice steadily rose from intensely quiet to shouting, “And when the divorce comes, she’ll want to take everything from you, including this stupid, wagon-wheeled, Roy Rogers garage sale coffee table!”

Three sets of eyes stared aghast at Peter as he stormed out of the room, but before he left Ned found the courage to yell, “I thought you liked this coffee table!”

Peter threw his hands in the air, “I was being nice.” The front door slammed shut.

Ned and Betty slowly turned to Michelle for answers. She wanted to explain how cold and callous Felicia had been that afternoon, and how Peter had looked so devastated by the mere sight of her. She wanted to explain that Peter had spent over a year working on becoming okay with being a divorcee. She wanted to explain how he was finally crawling out of the hole of hell Felicia had bombed in the center of his life just for her to show up to remind him of how much she had hurt him.

Michelle said, “He just bumped into Felicia.”

Both Ned and Betty tried to pry details from Michelle about the meeting but she waved them off and plummeted down the stairs after Peter. He was furiously pacing in front of the apartment building and muttering to himself.

Michelle perched herself on the stoop and waited for him to speak. It took him a few minutes but he finally stopped walking and said, “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Michelle patted the concrete step beside her and offered some sage advice, “Peter, you’re going to have to find some way of not expressing every feeling you have every moment you have them.”

He bristled, “Oh really? Well, next time you’re teaching a lecture series on social graces, make sure to let me know.”

Michelle suddenly pushed off of the concrete and stepped in front of Peter on the sidewalk, forcing him to stop his infernal pacing. She jammed a finger in his chest, “Hey, you don’t have to throw your anger at me.”  

Peter demanded, “How is it possible nothing bothers you? You never get upset about anything.”

Michelle felt the pesky well of some unacknowledged feeling churn deep in her stomach. Before it could manifest, she turned on her heel and bounded up the concrete steps, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Peter pursued her up every steps, testing her resolve with every word he spewed, “I never see you get upset about Harry. How is that possible? Don’t you experience any feelings of loss? If you’re so over Harry why don’t you see anyone?”

Michelle turned around, two steps above him, and glared, “I see people.”

Peter shook his head, “No, MJ. Have you slept with anyone since Harry?”

The feelings she was pushing down were rolling up and coursing through her in ways she never permitted, in manners she never allowed. Michelle forced them down to the pits of her subconscious and spit, “That will prove I’m over Harry? Because I fucked somebody?” Peter physically froze. Michelle took a predatory step down the steps and got squarely in Peter’s face, holding him utterly accountable for every stupid, ridiculous word he had thrown at her in attempt to hurt her feelings. “You think throwing the sex thing in my face is going to make the fact that Felicia hurt you, go away? You make me hurt, too, so we hurt together? How the fuck is that fair? I’m not going to commiserate in mutual misery, Peter. I won’t do it.”

She was fuming. Her eyes were firing with anger that he had pulled to the surface. Luckily, that was all he had brought up. She wasn’t ready to have a breakdown about Harry Osborn. She was never going to give Harry that power over her. He had left her and she was fine.

It was fine.

Peter whispered, “Can I say something?”

Michelle blew some stray curls out of her eyes, “Yes.”

“Are you finished?”

Michelle crossed her arms over her chest and huffed, “Yes.”

Peter’s entire face fell and he took the last step up so they were face-to-face and pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry,” he said fiercely. “I’m so, so sorry.” He rubbed his hand up and down her back, and she hugged him back.

In each other’s arms, they took a deep breath and let it all go. Felicia. Harry. Their fight.

When the hug was over, Peter dropped a careless kiss on Michelle’s forehead, “Come on, we should get back upstairs.”

The front door to the apartment building blew open and Ned tumbled out, struggling with the ugly coffee table. He marched it down to the curb for the garbage man and grumbled, “Don’t say a word.”

* * *

The receiver clicked. The voice on the other end of the phone had gone silent. There was only the faint buzzing of the dead line in her ear or, she wondered, if perhaps the buzzing was her ears.

Harry Osborn was getting married.

She tasted the salt of her tears as they leaked down her face. Michelle furiously wiped at her wet cheeks. She hadn’t cried since she was sixteen years old.

Michelle blindly began to type in a new number, one she knew by heart. It rang only twice before a sleepy and rumbled sounding Peter answered the phone, “Em?” He yawned.

Michelle turned inwards on herself, making a cocoon of blankets around herself, and sniffled, “Could you come over?” She knew it was well past midnight, but she was desperate.  

Peter sounded wide awake, “What’s the matter?”

“He’s getting married,” she mumbled into her thick duvet.

“Who?”

“Harry.”

There was the briefest pause. And then, Peter said, “I’ll be right there.”

* * *

She heard the frantic knocking coming from her front door. Michelle willed herself to get out of bed, but the warm embrace of her blankets was too good to untangle herself. Besides, Peter had a key to her apartment. He could let himself in.

The front door creaked open and she heard the clacking of his shoes on her wooden floors. She didn’t make a sound when he sat on the edge of her bed and the mattress dipped. Michelle peaked out from beneath her comfortable prison of blankets, “I’m sorry for calling you so late.”

“Hey,” Peter said, folding back the blankets so he could see her entire face. He swiped some of her curls off of her face, “It’s okay.” He looked so sad for her, as if he pitied her, and, for some reason, that made her cry harder. She was Michelle Jones. She would not be pitied because her ex-boyfriend was marrying some girl he preferred over her. That was inane. That was silly.

Harry Osborn was getting married.  

Her shoulders shook from the weight of her tears. Peter pulled her to a sitting position and slung a comforting arm around her. She buried her nose in his shoulder and wiped her nose with the back of her hand unprettily, “He just called me up.” Peter nodded patiently, encouraging her to speak. “And we got to talking and all I kept thinking was I am over him. I mean, I am really over him. I can’t believe I ever was into him. And then,” Michelle’s voice hitched. “And then, he said he had some news.” Her tears completely enveloped her entire body. It was like a wave crashing into her chest and rippling out to her extremities. “She works for his father. Some kind of lab assistant or something. Her name is Lily Hollister.” She hid her face in her hands to muffle a sob, “He just met her. She’s supposed to be his transitional person, she’s not supposed to be the one.”

She felt Peter rub soothing circles into her back. Michelle loathed how much the small action was settling her tears. When her crying subsided enough that she could speak without her raw throat burning from the strain, she said, “All this time I’ve been saying he didn’t want to be married. But, the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me.”

The truth snapped the last chord of restraint she had on her wildly overwhelming emotions. It was as if years of keeping her feelings at bay had finally cascaded out of her like an avalanche, and she could not stop the natural disaster. She watched on in horror as the strong woman Michelle Jones was reduced to tears by her piss-stain of an ex-boyfriend.

Peter chastely kissed her forehead, “Listen, if you could have him back right now, would you?”

Michelle hiccupped, “No. But why didn’t he want to marry me?” Her voice was more shrill than she could ever remember it having been. She was revolted by the grating sound. It made her cry harder. “What is wrong with me?”

He shook his head, “Nothing.”

Michelle flopped back on her bed. Peter did not wait to follow her down. They lay, side-by-side, and their faces faced each other. Michelle scratched her nose with her fist, “I’m difficult.”

“You’re challenging,” Peter corrected her.

“I’m too cold. I’m completely closed off,” she fought.

He simply tapped her nose with the pad of his forefinger, “You’re particular.”

“And,” she wailed dramatically, “I’m going to be forty!”

Peter openly gawked at her and she could see the ticking mechanism in his brain working through her words, “What? Michelle, when.”

“Some day,” she sat up, perfectly happy to wallow in her own sorrows.

He raised his eyebrow, “In nine years.” Peter sat up and brushed his shoulder against her own. It was a little gesture, but it reminded her that he was here for her, that he had taken a cab across town to be with her after midnight. Harry Osborn didn’t love her, but she had a good friend that did. “C’mere,” he cooed, and she easily fell into his arms.

She whimpered, “I’m going to ruin your sweater.”

“I hate this sweater,” he supplied.

Michelle nuzzled her nose into the fabric and sulked, “I bought you this sweater.”

Peter shrugged, “I stand by what I said.”

His words surprised a laugh out of her. The corners of his eyes crinkled in the pleased little manner that was all Peter. He had such a soft, gentle way about his smiles and the magical ability to make her feel like he only smiled at her that way. As if she was special.

“I’ll go make you some tea,” he said, pressing a kiss to her head.

Michelle clutched his sweater and shook her head furiously, “Peter, will you…will you stay with me a while?”

He pulled her closer, “Of course.” She fell openly into his arms and tucked her chin on his shoulder. She held him until her tears began to subside in earnest. Her heartrate slowed and her breathing evened, and she felt wholly like herself once more, or at least the imperfect version of herself before Harry Osborn called and made those imperfections shards of glass that cut away at her self-confidence.

Peter squeezed her and she smiled. “You good?” he quietly asked.

She nodded and unwound her arms from around him. Michelle rubbed her eyes with the flat of her palms, “Mhmm.”

He smiled and kissed her wet eyes, “Good. Tea?” Michelle bobbed her head. Peter kissed each of her cheeks patiently, “Okay.”

“Okay,” she echoed.

He playfully reiterated, “Okay.” And left a brief, sweet kiss on her lips. Michelle rolled her eyes and pushed his chest without any effort. Peter closed his hand over her hand on his chest and beamed, “Tea, then.” He brushed a friendly kiss against her mouth. She dropped another perfectly friendship worthy kiss on his lips and felt her stomach swoop.

He left another kiss on her mouth, less friendly. _Oh_ , it was all together not friendly.

It was the least friendly kiss she had ever been given in her life.

The hand resting against his chest fisted in his sweater and pulled him closer. They fell into a heady mix of open-mouthed, deep kisses and Michelle ceased to think.

Peter unceremoniously knocked the used box of tissues onto the floor and tipped Michelle backwards on the bed.

The last lucid thought she had before they tripped into the awaiting night was, **of course, it had to be him**.


	4. thirty-one

Michelle blew her sweaty, sticky curls out of her face and heaved a hefty exhale. Beside her, Peter rubbed his face and was uncharacteristically quiet. They had sex. No, more accurately, they had good sex.

A creeping, bright smile nipped at the corners of her mouth until she was beaming. She had not expected the night to progress from sobbing about Harry Osborn to falling into bed with Peter, but she was glad for it. In a little over a year, he had become one of the most important people in her life. He was the kind of man that took a cab across town in the middle of the night to hold her as she cried. She had somehow missed how wonderful he was between the late-night talks about black and white movies, and weekly lunch dates, and walks in the park.

Michelle rolled over and tucked a confident arm around his naked chest. Peter stared at the ceiling, still catching his breath.

“You know,” he said, eyes focused on the crown molding of her apartment, “before you go to bed with someone, you don’t know things.”

“Like what?” Michelle yawned.

He gestured limply to the ceiling, “Like their ceiling has two different shades of white.”

Michelle rolled her eyes and pecked his cheek. He really was the most easily distracted man. She leaned across him and flicked the light off. When she cuddled up to Peter, Michelle tiredly stirred, “Yeah, that’s New York landlords for you. Shotty paint jobs.”

Peter husked a laugh and said nothing more.

* * *

The sunlight did not wake Michelle. She only stretched awake when her bed shifted as Peter crawled out of it before the sunrise. Michelle propped herself up on her elbows and watched him quietly zip up his pants, and she felt sick to her stomach.

Something was terribly wrong.

Michelle turned her beside lamp on, illuminating the room, and Peter turned to look at her. He was smiling, but it was too tight to be natural and it didn’t reach his eyes in the way she was accustomed. She had been right—something was wrong.

She no longer felt the same warm comfort from the night before when she had buried her face in his sweater and he had dropped effortless kisses on her head. Feeling exposed, she pulled the blankets up over her chest and leaned back against the headboard. She tried her damndest to feign a casual demeanor as her insides shrieked. “Where’re you going?”

Peter pulled the sweater she had bought him, that he had called ugly the night before, over his head. In the shady light of her beside lamp, Michelle decided she, too, thought it was the ugliest sweater she had ever seen. It deserved to be tossed into some kind of bonfire, perhaps with his stupid ass.

The stupid ass said, “I’ve got to get to get home to change for work.” He knelt beside her bed and rested an anxious hand on her knee. Peter was so stiff, as if he had never touched another person before. He gracelessly pointed out, “You have to go to work, too.”

Michelle nodded tersely, “Of course. I understand.” She understood perfectly. He was running away.

He squeezed her knee, “Listen, after work today, let me take you to dinner, okay?” Michelle wanted to demand answers, but she was so caught off guard and hurt by the morning getaway, she only nodded. Peter smiled and perfunctorily kissed her on the mouth. It tasted stale. “I’ll see you later.”

Her eyes prickled from some unbidden emotion. She was too afraid to speak, in case her voice gave away how distressed she felt, so she nodded. Again.

He stepped toward the door briefly. Michelle hiccupped a sharp breath. Peter stopped cold in his tracks. He swooped down, pressed his lips against her forehead and lingered.

Michelle closed her eyes and when she opened them, he was gone.

She grabbed the pillow beside her and buried a sharp scream in it. The scream did not offer the relief she desperately craved. It had been the pillow that he had slept on the night before and it still faintly smelled like him. Michelle cursed a tapestry of filthy words.

Thoroughly embarrassed, she tossed it away.

She looked around her room and scowled. It was a crime scene of her tumble with Peter. There were traces of him everywhere, as if he had left invisible marks in her space, claiming it as his own. He had burned his presence in her home and then, run away.

Michelle scrambled for her cellphone on the bedside table and called the only person she could stomach to speak to in her current state. It rang for two, torturously long dial tones, “Betty?”

Her best friend groggily groaned from the other end of the line, “MJ?”

Michelle heard Ned distantly gripe in the background, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Betty hushed him with a sounding swat and asked Michelle between dips of yawning, “Honey, what’s wrong?”

She scornfully eyed the pillow that still vaguely smelt like Peter from across her bedroom and sighed, “God, Betty. I did such a dumb thing.” Ned spoke softly in the background, saying something to Betty that she could not hear. Michelle ignored him and pressed on, “I found out Harry was getting married yesterday and, I don’t know, Peter came over last night to comfort me and one thing led to another and…we did it.”

Betty gasped, “Oh, MJ, honey, that’s great!” Ned eagerly said something she could not make out. It almost sounded as if he wasn’t talking to her at all. Betty plowed on, “We’ve been hoping you would for months now. It makes so much sense. You two should’ve done it months ago.”

Michelle swallowed the lump in her throat and banished the welling of her stinging eyes, “The during part was great, but, I don’t know, after he got all weird. And this morning he could barely look at me. It was like he zipped up his pants and left.”

Betty snarled, “What a pig.”

Michelle crawled under her blankets and rested the phone on her sex-ruined duvet. She would need to wash everything that Peter had touched and tainted with his memories. Not even her split from Harry Osborn had hurt as much as Peter leaving. She wondered when she had given him the power to wound her. “I feel so stupid.”

“Do you want to come over for breakfast?” Michelle heard Betty and Ned echo simultaneously.

Michelle considered it, if only for a moment, but she did not want to be around her happy engaged friends. She needed to clean her sheets and curse Peter for a few more hours until she felt like a person, again. She declined, “No. I don’t think I’m up to it.”

Betty sighed, “Okay, well, you know I’m here for you if you need to talk.”

Michelle stared at the paint stain on her ceiling. She hated how it now reminded her of Peter. “I know.”

* * *

When Michelle arrived at the restaurant Peter had chosen for their post-coital dinner, she realized she was not ready to see him. She had spent the better part of her morning furiously cleaning every surface he had interacted with the night before and even nipped out to buy new pillows to mute his memory from her bedroom. After all of her meticulous preparation, Michelle had looked around room and frowned. Clean sheets and new pillows did not banish him.

So, when she saw him sitting too casually to be natural at their usual table in the corner, she froze. She took two steps back toward the door, planning her escape, when Peter called out, “MJ! Michelle, over here!”

Her feet were filled with lead. It took Herculean efforts to drag her feet along the carpet to the shared table. Peter stood awkward, as if he might hug her, but then he thought better of the intimacy and pat her on the shoulder. Michelle bit her tongue. She sat in the straight-back chair and made a sour attempt at smalltalk, “Has the server come yet?”

Peter nodded, “Uh, yeah. You were running a little late so I took the liberty of ordering for you.” He hurriedly added, “I know how particular you are with your food.”

He had called her particular the night before when they laid strewn out on her bed as she cried about Harry. Peter had delicately brushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at her like she was the answer to some question he had been asking forever.

Now, he could barely meet her eye.

Michelle took a hearty gulp of her water. She allowed the uncomfortable silence to eat away at the time. When the starter arrived, Peter sighed, “Look, MJ—“

She did not know what he wanted to say next, but she was filled with a sharp fear that, if she allowed him to talk first, he would get to control what happened next. So, she spoke over him, “Peter, last night was a mistake.”

His shoulders collapsed and he had the audacity to look relieved. “Yes,” he smiled, “Yes. Exactly. I knew you’d understand.”

She picked up her wounded pride and dusted it off for something much colder and removed, “We should just pretend it never happened.”

He smiled, “I just want things to go back to the way they were.” Michelle stiffly bobbed her head. She stabbed a mozzarella stick with her fork and traded in conversation for food. It was quiet for a while before Peter tried to break the icy front that she was guiding brick by brick between them, “Its so nice when you are so comfortable with someone that you don’t even have to talk.”

Michelle would not have called the dinner comfortable silence. It was everything but. 

* * *

Every day leading up to Betty and Ned’s wedding, Michelle used every wedding-related excuse in the book to avoid seeing Peter.

One day she had to help Betty arrange the seating assignments for the reception. Another day she had a fitting with all of the other bridesmaids that meant she couldn’t go to their weekly dinner date. Then, she had wedding shower details to coordinate and presents to wrap and a registry to help Betty organize.

All of the wedding preparations meant she simply did not have time for Peter Parker.

In the little non-wedding time she was afforded, Michelle painted her room a light blue. It covered the ugly, mismatched swatches of white that once stained her ceiling.

* * *

Michelle could not fathom how one person could look so resplendent. Betty Bryant, soon-to-be-Leeds, looked absolutely knockout stunning on her wedding day. As the Maid of Honor, MJ stood at the head of the alter with the perfect view of her best friend gliding down the Church toward her future husband.

Betty had tears in her eyes.

Michelle knew the wedding had been fast, but she recalled what Betty had said at the Bugle when Michelle questioned her best friend about Ned Leeds. “When you know, you know,” she had said. She did not understand that sentiment, then; but she did now. Michelle resisted the urge to look at Peter who was standing on the opposite end of the alter as Best Man. She could feel his laser-focused eyes beseeching her to turn to him, to meet his eye, to look at him. She would not. It had been a month since they had sex on that sweltering August night.

Her anger had still not subsided. She would not let it go because she was afraid when the fear was gone she would only be left with some kind of sadness and inexplicable loss. 

* * *

“She looked lovely,” Michelle agreed with who she believed was Ned’s cousin at the wedding reception.

Perhaps-Ned’s-cousin nodded his head toward the dance floor, “Could I offer you a dance?”

Michelle tugged on her velvet bodice and politely declined, “I’ve been on my feet all day, but thank you, anyway.” She respected that perhaps-Ned’s-cousin did not argue with her, but instead moved onto the next bridesmaid he might have better luck wooing.

“That’s Marvin,” Peter clarified, as he took his usual spot at her left hand side.

All of the warmth she had greeted each and every guest that monopolized her time at the reception suddenly frosted over. She looked out at the dance floor, in an attempt to avoid his gaze, and curtly replied, “Thank you.”

She heard Peter shift his weight between his feet. She knew he had a tendency to squirm when he was uncomfortable. She heard the wrinkle of his dress pants when he shoved his hands in his pockets, “How’ve you been? The wedding kept you busy.”

“Fine.”

Peter rolled his ankle, “How’s everything with, uh, work?”

Michelle rolled her eyes, “Peter, I don’t want to talk about this.”

She did not mean work and he knew it. Peter turned to face her completely, “This is because of what happened, isn’t it?” Michelle iced him out and tried to get a better view of the wedding party doing a half-assed electric slide. Peter touched her arm, pleading, “MJ?”

She grit her teeth but refused to look at him, and said, “It just happened, Peter. I don’t want to talk about this with you. Not now.”

“Miche—“

“Maybe not ever,” she crumbled, turning to look at him. God, looking at him brought the wave of all of her heart crashing back on the stormy beaches of her heart. She could not forget the hurried way he had fled her apartment that morning and the uncomfortable, awkward dinner that followed that night.

His helplessly countered, “It happened three weeks ago. When are we going to get past this?”

She barked out a rough, emotional laugh. The wedding guests on the outskirts of the electric slide turned around curiously. She did not want to draw an audience, so she began to stomp toward the staff kitchen. If he wanted to have a throw-down fight with her at their best friends’ wedding, she would not do it in full view of strangers.

Peter did not hesitate to scramble after her.

When they blew through the staff kitchen door, Michelle found she was in immediate view of the curious staff in the tightly enclosed space. It was worse than fighting on the dance floor.

“Michelle,” Peter tried.

She snapped, “Don’t!”

Michelle tried to sidestep Peter and exit the kitchen. The staff was starting to twitter nervously at their heated exchange. She had not wanted to fight in front of the wedding guests, but the watching kitchen staff made her feel just as exposed. “I just don’t understand,” she quipped, “how it didn’t mean anything to you.”

Peter blocked the swinging metal door, “Hey, woah. I am not saying it doesn’t mean anything. Just—” Michelle crossed her arms over her chest. His eyes were wide, open and imploring, “Why does it have to mean everything?”

Michelle taped her cracking heart with flimsy adhesive and promised herself she would fortify it with steel later. Never again would she let Peter Parker make her feel the fool. God, she should have trusted her twenty-two year old self that clocked him as a exactly what he turned out to be—disappointing.

She scoffed, “Because it does.” The embers of some long forgotten angry fire when they had first met awoken. “And know you know that better than anyone because you ran out the door the first chance you got.” She remembered how big and empty her bed had felt the morning he had left her all alone. And, she wasn’t sure the hurt would ever subside or if she could ever forgive him abandoning her.

Peter, with an outstretched hand, stepped toward her and said, “I didn’t run…”

She recoiled from his touch, “You sprinted.”

Peter dropped his hand. He clenched it into a tight fist and forced it to his side. “We both agreed it was a mistake.”

“The worst mistake I ever made,” Michelle agreed and shoved past him. The kitchen door swung open and her shoes clacked as she re-entered the ballroom. The wedding guests were still milling about, smiling and dancing and laughing. It felt like a mockery of her own circumstance.

Peter chased her heels, “What do you want from me, huh?”

Michelle carelessly looked at him over her shoulder as she tried to escape his looming figure that seemed determined to hash out whatever they had lost between them, “I don’t want anything from you.”

“Fine!” Peter hissed. He grabbed her arm and expertly spun her around. Michelle tried to shirk herself free but she was stuck. To look at Peter Parker, she would have thought he was a flimsy and soft-handed boy, but he was a strong man. “But let’s get something straight, okay?” Peter whispered hastily on the outskirts on the crowd. “I did not go over there to make love to you, that is not why I went there.” Michelle huffed. Peter continued, “But you sounded so upset over the phone and, I don’t know, I had to be there with you. I couldn’t let you be upset alone. And when I got there you were looking at me with those big, weepy eyes.”

Peter trailed off, as if he had been swept up in the memory of that night. She shook like a leaf. He didn’t deserve to reminisce about a night that he had proven meant less to him than it had to her. She tried to pull her arm free and, in turn, yanked him from his thoughts. “Michelle,” he said softly, “What was I supposed to do?”

Her breath caught, “You never should have kissed me.”

Peter glanced down at her mouth, “I-I’m not that strong.”

She put on an impressive show of pulling her arm free from his grasp at last. Michelle tucked her arm into her chest and cradled it there. She swallowed her emotions, “Are you not that strong or was it a mistake? Which is it?”

Peter growled in frustration, “Why is everything so black and white with you? Can’t it be enough that I didn’t want to see you upset?”

Michelle whirled at the implication of her words. Violent irritation flared in the pit of her stomach and drowned her voice in malice, “What are you saying? That you took pity on me?”

“No, I was—”

She heard the crack of her slap before she felt the sting of it extend out from her palm to the ends of her fingertips. Peter looked as shocked as she felt from the impact. He turned his head back to her with wide, betrayed eyes. She had hit him.

“Em—” he questioned.

The part of her that wanted to apologize and fold him into her arms could not stop remembering all of his words, his kisses, and his pity. Michelle would not be pitied. Cross her heart and hope to die.

She hastily wiped at her eyes, “Fuck you.”

Michelle pushed into the gathered wedding crowd that all seemed eagerly focused on the newlyweds giving their wedding speech. Peter pursued Michelle through the thick of the crowd until Betty noticed them weaving through the room.

With the brightest smile, Betty addressed her wedding guests, “And, of course, we want to thank Peter and Michelle.”

They both stopped dead.

Ned tugged an arm around Betty and joked, “Thank you for inviting me to the worst double date of my life. Without that really awkward dinner, I never would have met my wife.”

The whole room politely applauded, but Michelle only heard the racing of her broken heart.

* * *

In all of her thirty-one years, Michelle Jones had never really listened to any of her voicemails. She had been a child of the nineties for what felt like only a minute and text messages had taken over as the primary avenue of communication. The only people that ever bothered to leave her voicemails were telemarketers.

Until Peter Parker.

After the wedding, he began leaving lengthy messages on her machine and, for the first time in her life, she listened.

The first few messages colored the fall with familiar jokes and wistful recounting of shared memories.

By mid-November, they turned far more desperate.

* * *

**September 27**

_"Hey MJ. I went to our favorite diner today. That waitress was wondering where you were. I’m wondering that, too. Call me back.”_

* * *

**September 30**

"H _ey Michelle. I was thinking about my message the other day. Am I not allowed to call you MJ right now, is that why you aren’t calling me back? I remember you said only let your friends call you MJ and, I guess, I haven’t been a very good friend. Please call.”_

* * *

**October 5**

_"Michelle, I had a horrible thought in the shower this morning. If you aren’t picking up because you’ve been crushed under that rickety bookcase for the last week, I don’t want to say I told you to fix that bookcase, but I told you so. I hope you haven’t been crushed to death. When you wiggle free of the bookcase, call me.”_

* * *

**October 12**

_“I spoke to Betty today. She says you are not dead or the victim of a bookcase accident. I’m very relieved. If you want to call me…But that’s the thing, isn’t it? You don’t want to call me. I hope you change your mind."_

* * *

**October 20**

" _I am out of mind from missing you. Look, I know I screwed up. I get that. I wish you’d call me so I could make it right.”_

* * *

**November 9**

_"God, what kind of asshole can’t take a hint, you know? This asshole. I am an asshole. So, please call me.”_

* * *

**November 23**

_"Happy Thanksgiving. Do you remember last year when we spent the whole day eating mashed potatoes on my couch? You were very judgmental of my mashed potato and ketchup combination. I still stand by it. It’s delicious. Ring me back.”_

* * *

**December 2**

_"I miss you.”_

_"_... _I miss you so much.”_

_"I promised Ned I would stop making a fool of myself. I can’t. I know I should leave you alone, but we’re friends. Friends fight. Then, they make up. Or at least, I have to hold out hope that we will. Cross my heart. Hope to die.”_

* * *

On the second of December, Michelle listened to Peter’s three messages back-to-back, over and over again. She could imagine him slumped over the old, tattered chair jammed between his living room wall and the window. If she closed her eyes, she could see him wrapped around his phone and leaving message after message for her voicemail.

He had said he missed her. She wanted so desperately for that to be enough, but in the last two months of their icy silent routine of not seeing one another, Michelle had discovered they could not go back.

The two of them had carelessly tipped over the edge of some invisible line that, once crossed, was impossible to backtrack from. She knew every part of him now. She could not forget the way he kissed her or the way his body rippled under her eager hands as they made love. She could not forget the whole beautiful, tragic rightness of it all.

It had been a mistake. She wished she could take it all back, but being an adult meant living with mistakes. Or choosing when certain pain could not stand to be endured, but instead cut out.

And she had cut Peter out with a jagged knife. The hole he had left behind was uneven and scarring, but she would survive. She was, at her core, a survivor.

She picked up the phone.

It barely rang for less-than-a-tone before a breathless Peter answered from across town, “Michelle? Hello? Is that you?”

The sound of his voice in real time sent her back to the end of September when they had fought at Betty and Ned’s wedding. Michelle schooled her features and wavering voice to something more cold and clipped, “Peter, I can’t talk long. I’m on my way out.”

She heard Peter stumble over something as he stuttered, “Where…where…where’re you going?”

Michelle rested the phone against her chest and took a deep breath. She would not let him rattle her. She was strong. She lifted the phone to her ear, “What do you want, Peter?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I just…” He exhaled, “I just called to say I’m sorry.”

In all the months they had been fighting, Michelle realized Peter had never said he was sorry. As soon as he did, she felt lighter, like he had released her from some purgatory she had been living in since the day he had zipped up his pants and creeped out her door. She wanted an apology. She missed her friend.

Michelle clasped her hand over her mouth and mumbled, “I’ve got to go.”

Peter nearly yelped, “Wait a minute, MJ. Wait, hold on.” She did not hang up. “Are you going to the Bugle’s New Years’ Party? Because we always said if we didn’t have a date by New Years, I could go with you.”

As friends, Michelle bitterly thought. They had made that arrangement before they had fallen into bed together and their entire friendship imploded.

Michelle cut off his incessant rambling, “I can’t do this anymore, Peter. I am not your consolation prize.” She refused to be that girl. She deserved better than that.

“Em—”

“Goodbye.”

She hung up the phone.

But even after his voice had gone dead on the other line, Michelle kept the phone up to her ear to listen to the fuzzy dial-tone until her cellphone shut off, forty-five minutes later.  


	5. new year’s eve

Peter Parker stared, slack-jawed and incomprehensibly hurt, at the phone clenched in his fist. In the two months it had taken him to talk to Michelle after the catastrophe that had been Ned and Betty’s wedding, she had hung up on him. He could not believe their relationship had collapsed into war-torn wreckage in so little time, but, for the first time since he had left her on that fateful morning, Peter felt a real sense of worry.

Like, perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps they wouldn’t make up and he would be left to navigate the rest of his life without her.

* * *

On Christmas Day, he did not call. 

* * *

The day after Christmas, he nearly did. 

* * *

 On New Years Eve, he was beyond caring.

This was good, he thought, as he surfed the television for any program that wasn’t rattling on about New Years Eve. Hell, this was better. He much preferred being along on such a desperate holiday than forced into the crowded company of strangers all angling for their midnight-kiss.

Suddenly, an alarming memory crashed into his gut with a resounding thud— he hadn’t kissed anyone since Michelle.

He reasoned that, no, that couldn’t be right, but when he tried to conjure another woman after their time together on that overly sticky August night, he could not think of anyone else. In truth, there could have been an odd dalliance after Michelle, but they were all together forgettable.

Yet, he could not shake the sneaking suspicion that there had not been anyone else since her teary eyes had blinked up at him and asked him, in a way that he never would have been able to deny her, to stay a little longer.

“Fucking shit goddamn it,” Peter cursed, switching off his television. The chirpy holiday hosts faded.

Peter rested his elbows on his knees. Then, abruptly stood.

He could feel his heart rate rising and his pulse pattering wildly. Even from across town, she had him worked up. Michelle Jones was so, so, _so_ —

His.

And he had fucked it up with one terror-driven mistake. He should have stayed with her that morning. He should have curled his arm around her slim waist, brushed a lidded kiss on her forehead and stayed. He had been so afraid to lose her that he had let her go bit-by-bit, one day at a time, until she was lost to him.

He cursed. Loudly.

And then, he was assaulted by memories.

The way she had looked on the plane all those years ago. The smile she had thrown him the day she agreed that they could be friends. The ugly sweater she buried her snot-ridden nose into when Harry Osborn told her he was getting married. The way she had looked up at him, her fingers clenched around his, as they slowly moved together in the early morning light. The way she had gasped his name. And clung to him. And her face as—

Peter grabbed his shoes.

He put them on.

He walked down the steps of his apartment.

He strolled down the street.

Then, he jogged.

No, he ran.

* * *

When threw open the glass doors of the Daily Bugle, he made a beeline directly for the elevator. Mostly drunken employees loitered near the elevator and took turns arguing about which floor the party was on. Peter tried to nudge past them into the open, metal doors but they were all drunk and belligerent. He was effectively stuck with only one option.

Peter ran, without stopping, up the stairs of fifteen office building floors. He used his shoulders to yank his tired body up the floor by the railing. If his legs failed, he would not.

When he heard the faint party music echo, he, with what little strength he had left, rallied and pushed open the fifteenth floor door.

The party was in full holiday swing five minutes to midnight. There were at least a hundred guests hanging on their friends and coworkers, but no Michelle.

She was nowhere to be found. She was not there. He had, after everything, missed her.

Then, he heard a familiar voice tinged with annoyance, “I’m sick of people pawing at me, Betty. I love you, but I’m going home.”

Peter turned around and there, across the packed room of streamers and countdowns, was Michelle.

He pushed his way through the throng of people, aching to get to her. His exhaustion was nothing compared to the greater, more urgent need to be near her, to talk to her. Heavens, he missed her.

He skidded to a halt before her and her eyes echoed the same surprise that surged in him. Peter Parker had no idea why he ran thirty-five blocks on a freezing cold night to talk to a woman that had made it abundantly clear that their friendship was a thing of the past.

He was an idiot. A dolt. A dummy. For coming there.

And she. Well. She looked stunning.

And furious. She snarled, “Peter, what are you doing here?”

“The thing is,” he started, but lost his words. It hit him like a truck how much he had missed looking at her, being around her, Michelle. He had missed his best friend.

Michelle had told him once, when they were twenty-two, that men and women could not be friends without men letting sex get in the way. She had been right. He let it drive a wedge between them in the cruelest way and, he realized with a twinge, he missed her desperately.

Her friendship, sure. But her most of all.

“I love you,” he said.

It should have been scary. He had loved Felicia, too, and she had left him. To love someone was to give them the most vulnerable parts of yourself and ask them to be gentle with no guarantees.

It was a risk. It was dangerous.

But, with the right person, it was everything.

Michelle stared at him. She cleared her throat but her voice still sounded like it had been caught on something jagged and rough, “What am I supposed to say to that?”

Peter stepped toward her, cautiously, “How about you love me, too?”

Michelle rolled her eyes, “You can’t...” She huffed, “It’s not. Damn you, Peter.”

He couldn’t help himself. He tentatively smiled, painfully aware of the thin ice he was skating on. “Doesn’t what I said mean anything to you?”

Michelle shouldered her way through the crowd, trying to escape him. The scene was far too close to what had transpired at the wedding and Peter felt a spike of panic. He could not, would not let the day end the same way it had at the wedding. “Michelle—“ he reached for her.

She lurched away from his touch, “Don’t.” Michelle looked him in the eye and the weight of her gaze was so intense he resisted a shudder that licked down his spine. “I know it’s New Years and you’re lonely, but you’re not allowed to waltz in here and tell me you love me. Like you mean it,” she mirthlessly huffed. He tried to speak, but she cut him off, “Like that’ll fix anything! It doesn’t work that way.”

Peter wanted to throw his arms around her and kiss her. But she was being so damned difficult. She was the kind of woman that took a mile for every inch. And damn it, he loved her recklessly, without hope and completely.

He demanded, “How is it supposed to work, then?”

She swiped hair out of her eyes and said sharply, “I don’t know. But not like this.”

Michelle turned her back to him and Peter lurched in front of her, forcing her to a complete stop. She looked like she was about to whack him with her little purse and he knew he’d deserve it. But before she could mount her attack, he raised her hands, in a sign of surrender, and began to speak. “Okay. How about like this?”

“Pet—“

Peter felt a pulsing headache gather behind his eyes. He rubbed the pad of his thumb against his temple and clipped, “Would you please listen to me? For once in your life, Em.”

She growled in a way that he knew he was not forgiven for snapping at her, but she went mercifully silent. Expectant. As if she was waiting for him to say what little he had come here to say so she could rip into him for ruining her holiday with his last-minute, dramatic shenanigans.

Peter cursed under his breath and tried to gather his thoughts. He hadn’t planned what he was going to say when he ran across town on New Years Eve to get to her. He had just run.

And run.

And run.

Right to her.

Of course, in the end, it had to be her.

He met her eyes, clear and unflinching, and said, “I love how you get cold when it’s 62 degrees outside. I love the way your mouth turns up a little bit, right there, when you smile. I love how it takes you an hour and a half to order a fucking sandwich. I love how when I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. I love how, really, you’re the worst kind of cuddler, all hands and no space. And I’m not here because I’m lonely or because it’s New Years Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

She was silent.

Her eyes were glistening with tears. Peter felt his heart quake. He wanted to reach out to her, to take her hand in his, but she said, furiously, “God, that is just like you, Peter!”

All around them the crowd began to countdown to the New Year. Peter paid them no mind. Michelle continued, “You say things like that and it makes it impossible to hate you.” She sniffed, “And I hate you. I really, really hate you.”

Peter caressed her face. She shivered under his touch. And her watery eyes glistened. She mouthed without any heat, “I hate you.”

She surged forward and crushed their mouths together. Peter felt terribly at peace. This, her, them had been what he was missing. He glided his fingertips down the hollow of her cheek, then down the curve of her neck and settled his hands on the dips at her waist.

The entire room burst into thunderous applause. It was the new year.

Peter kissed her, and kissed her until the room splintered off into congratulations for the new year. People were laughing with friends and singing loopy, drunken songs. Peter clung to Michelle, determined never to let her go again.

He had made the foulest mistake of his life, when he slipped out of her room that morning. Never again. Peter was going to do what he should have done that first day they met outside the student center at Stanford.

He had seen her lingering near his car that day and she had left him completely stunned. The light filtered through her curls and kissed the top of her head that was buried in some book. She was an utter revelation.

It had taken him nine years to come to grips with what he had instinctually known that day.

They broke their kiss. Michelle nudged her nose against Peter’s and he couldn’t not kiss her for that. “I love you,” he whispered, only loud enough for the two of them.

Michelle crossed her heart.

Peter nodded, and kissed her face, hopeless and hopeful all at once, “Hope to die.”

She threw her arms around him.

A new year.

A new beginning.

* * *

“We got married three months later,” Michelle said, tracing the lines on her husband’s palm. Peter swept a kiss in hollow of her neck. She pushed his face away with a smile, “All it took was three months.”

Peter turned to the interviewer, “Well, nine years and three months.”

“That doesn’t count,” Michelle rolled her eyes. “You hated me when we first met.”

Peter shook his head, “I didn’t hate you.”

“Well,” Michelle addressed the interviewer, from the Bugle, “I hated him.” She squeezed his hand, “And then the second time we met, you didn’t remember me.”

“I remembered you,” Peter lightly argued.

Michelle met his eye, “And then the third time we met, we became friends.”

Peter lifted the back of her hand to his lips and kissed it. She grinned, “We were friends for a long time.”

“Until we weren’t.” Peter crossed his finger across his heart.

Michelle smiled, bright and beautiful, _his wife_ , “Hope to die.”

* * *

**9 Years Earlier**

The girl, Michelle, sitting in his passenger seat on the trip to New York seemed more interested in her book than the three day, cross country tour they were about to embark upon together.

Liz had told him a bit about his traveling companion, but she had been completely silent since the drive began.

Peter gripped the steering wheel and glanced at her, “I’m Peter, by the way. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

She raised her eyes from the book, suspiciously, and replied, “I’m Michelle.”

Something strange passed between them. Peter gripped the wheel tighter. “Pleasure to meet you.”


End file.
